Author Topic: Does Social Media Help your Sales? (Read 4563 times)

pixel8 · « **on:** April 21, 2014, 12:34 »

I know social media is supposed to be a big deal but I wonder how many people here actually have seen it help there sales? It would seem that unless your friends on social media are graphic designers then spending your time promoting yourself on social media would not really bring you that many more sales!

Seems like people looking for stock photos would be heading straight for the Stock Sites instead of social media sites. What are you thoughts on this?

ShadySue · « **Reply #1 on:** April 21, 2014, 12:39 »

For stock, you're probably right, unless you have a big fanbase that you want to keep updated on your latest shoots.

It's often suggested that it can work well for FAA, but my 22 friends (ooooh, look how fast my numbers are rising, I only had 5 this time last year!) may or may not be interested to 'see' my pics, but not to buy, esp at FAA price and shipping. YMMV.

Ron · « **Reply #2 on:** April 21, 2014, 12:40 »

Social media is not only friends and family. You can create business pages on Facebook and Google+, start a business channel on YouTube, create a Twitter account. Many companies do that and the general outcome is that social media increase sales.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2013.pdf

60% of likes on my FB page are people I dont know. On Twitter I think 95% followers are people I dont know.

pixel8 · « **Reply #3 on:** April 21, 2014, 12:48 »

Quote from: Ron on April 21, 2014, 12:40

Social media is not only friends and family. You can create business pages on Facebook and Google+, start a business channel on YouTube, create a Twitter account. Many companies do that and the general outcome is that social media increase sales.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2013.pdf

60% of likes on my FB page are people I dont know. On Twitter I think 95% followers are people I dont know.

What about having a website? It seems if you had a website and were trying to rank well on Google for stock photos you are not going to rank well since there are so many stock sites taking up those first few pages!

How much time do you spend updating your social media pages?

jeffbanke · « **Reply #4 on:** April 21, 2014, 13:24 »

Always amuses me when folks talk about "likes" on social media, I have been on most of them all for a long time, have any of them ever led to a direct sale, or a job - Hell NO!

I cannot trace one measly sale on any of the microstocks, or FAA, or Alamy to a social media site.

gostwyck · « **Reply #5 on:** April 21, 2014, 13:25 »

Ron · « **Reply #6 on:** April 21, 2014, 13:37 »

Just being on social media isnt enough, you need to work it, just like any other form of advertising. Dont believe the hype, I dont care, but dont say it doesnt help sales when there are tons of reports and stats that say otherwise. Companies spend loads of marketing budget on social media for a reason.

fritz · « **Reply #7 on:** April 21, 2014, 13:51 »

Beppe Grillo · « **Reply #8 on:** April 21, 2014, 14:00 »

As LinkedIn is more business oriented (and gives you the possibility to show your portfolio in Behance) I would rely more on it than in Facebook of Google plus.

luissantos84 · « **Reply #9 on:** April 21, 2014, 14:20 »

if you have buyers/clients following you why shouldn't it help? ok it will be hard to attract them but in the long run it might be worth IMHO

guess that all people selling direct can say that as well

Ron · « **Reply #10 on:** April 21, 2014, 14:30 »

I actually ended up in a deal with a book writer for 7 images, ELs, through Facebook. She bought the first one on SS, but found me on FB and we worked it out from there. She might have found other ways to contact me, but having a presence on social media does help. I cant 100% confirm I had sales through social media, but I also cant confirm 100% I didnt have any sales through social media. It just takes time and its up to you to use it or not, but having a wide spread presence on the internet wont do you any harm.

Edit: http://vonthaer.blogspot.ie/2013/01/tuatha-series-changes.html
Book 1 and 2 in a 7 book series. No need to vote me down, its all true.

Shelma1 · « **Reply #11 on:** April 21, 2014, 14:33 »

Yep. I see the traffic that comes to my website through Facebook, and I also sold an EL through Facebook.

asmai · « **Reply #12 on:** April 21, 2014, 14:36 »

From my own experience:
Facebook is useless for my business. It's also not easy to use. My audience on FB is totally irrelevant. And you have to constantly update status, your audience decreases if you dont.
On the other hand Youtube is great, it brings me traffic, sales and also increasing income from ads. Lots of tools that help you to increase your RELEVANT audience. Also, once a video become more or less popular, it will take care of itself, you dont have to do a thing, your audience increases without you doing anything.

pixel8 · « **Reply #13 on:** April 21, 2014, 14:57 »

Quote from: Ron on April 21, 2014, 13:37

Just being on social media isnt enough, you need to work it, just like any other form of advertising.

Having run Various Businesses I agree, I looked at your website its pretty rockin! Is that a monthly price to host with them beyond the basics or a one time fee and you put the open source code on your own site you are hosted with? Have you had a good amount of sales from your own site?

Ron · « **Reply #14 on:** April 21, 2014, 15:11 »

Thank you, Its hosted at Blue Host, its a WP theme that you host directly on your server. The basic version cost nothing, the pro version cost 75$ once off. I had 1-2 sales per month, until it stopped in December. I also found out why. My workflow was to add images to my site first and when they were indexed I would send them to the agencies. From December on I started submitting to the agencies first and then to my site. After that no more sales. I need to switch my workflow around to make sure I get sales again. SEO is important. And 123 and DT are cheating Google by mimicking large previews >1mp when in fact they dont have large previews. They are cheating the system.

http://semmickphoto.com/symbiostock/

wordplanet · « **Reply #15 on:** April 21, 2014, 16:58 »

Licensed a stock photo to a book publisher this month. They contacted me both through my FB page and via my website, though guessing since they found the photo on my website, the FB contact was perhaps more to check me out that any help in generating the sale. Then again, I've gotten a few sales and some referrals through social media - some from my blog and a few from twitter. Even though I probably don't spend enough time on any of them, IMHO it's still very time consuming and not sure even the time spent is equal to the sales it has generated, but I do think potential clients expect you to have a presence so it's necessary.

I don't consider my site social media- but it is essential and has led to print sales, gallery and museum shows, stock photo sales, and assignments. I have the full pro site with Photoshelter and 1 TB of cloud storage - my first two sales of the year paid for the yearly hosting & it has been generating sales for me every month lately - three RM sales so far this month - 2 web & magazine sales and one book (mentioned above). This is all just about 80% through SEO - I have not done very much to leverage my site, but do intend to do more. It's been working for me for a few years now, but I noticed a bump in traffic since I was one of the featured photographers a few month back.

http://www.photoshelter.com/referral/MA2CA7TC7J

I took some photos of a fire recently (sold a couple locally) and also took some video - thinking I might try it on Utube, but or maybe Vimeo. Also need to do something with Behance. And now that the weather is nice, I want to get out and shoot more!

Cool covers Ron! Congrats on those sales.

Red Dove · « **Reply #16 on:** April 22, 2014, 05:14 »

Here is a quick tip for exponentially increasing your follower numbers on twitter. Send a couple of tweets along the lines of:

"I'm not sure how to use social media to market my business" or "I need help to organize my work and personal life"

Within days you will have every self-appointed social media marketing and self-improvement guru on the planet following you and touting their e-books, seminars, blogs, webinars and whatnot....And you will have an audience of over 2,000 and their associates to flog your stuff to.

pixel8 · « **Reply #17 on:** April 23, 2014, 00:04 »

Quote from: Red Dove on April 22, 2014, 05:14

Here is a quick tip for exponentially increasing your follower numbers on twitter. Send a couple of tweets along the lines of:

"I'm not sure how to use social media to market my business" or "I need help to organize my work and personal life"

Within days you will have every self-appointed social media marketing and self-improvement guru on the planet following you and touting their e-books, seminars, blogs, webinars and whatnot....And you will have an audience of over 2,000 and their associates to flog your stuff to.

So I don't use Twitter but might do so soon, my question is when you send a tweet who sees it? Only your friends or can you have it so everyone sees it and once those 2,000 people follow you they will see all your Tweets? If so that seems like it could be a great tool for self promotion and research!

Red Dove · « **Reply #18 on:** April 23, 2014, 01:42 »

There are various ways and third party created tools people can find you with if you research it. Mostly via Hash Tags or keywords. So you might write a tweet and add a hash tag # to words e.g. #marketing or if you were tweeting about your novel use hash tags like #horror or #zombies.

Twitter also uses internal algorithms to make you known to other tweeters who use or search for similar #tags or keywords.

On another note, I looked up my best selling image on a couple of websites where the article it was used to illustrate had been tweeted over 3k times and face booked over 5k times so that image would have been seen by a potentially very large audience, some of whom I'm sure would have thought it might make a very nice illustration for their own blog piece or whatever.

In short, social media does help your sales - although it might not necessarily be your own social media.

ETA - Yes, if you tweet, whoever is following will receive that tweet - but whether they read it or not is another thing. I would say 99% of my business income is still generated through face to face networking and word of mouth recommendations....I only have a theory that SM generates income for microstock and have no idea how to measure for success.

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Author Topic: Does Social Media Help your Sales? (Read 4563 times)

pixel8

ShadySue

Ron

pixel8

jeffbanke

gostwyck

Ron

fritz

Beppe Grillo

luissantos84

Ron

Shelma1

asmai

pixel8

Ron

wordplanet

Red Dove

pixel8

Red Dove

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